sounds like spring

When the children run through the sprinklers and the hose, when we linger for hours on the front patio, when the baby is magically entranced by everything he sees, when the dog doesn’t bark too much, when the husband comes home from a bike ride exhilarated and glad, when I sit on the sunny front steps and practice my ukulele (!), when the lilac is blooming, when I think about how many blueberries we’re going to get off of our bushes this year, I think we could stay here, in this sweet little house, for always.

If I could conjure up the missing pieces to make this situation fit just right for us, the husband wouldn’t have to drive so much every darn day, and if he did, he could do it in a different, more fuel efficient car. And there would be some kind of funky art school experience for my passionate artist daughter to attend, full of amazing and engaged young people. I would give her the community she seeks and I’d give her the kindred spirits she needs and there would be some kind of nature based outdoorsy all the time experience for mister Six and this would be enough, this town would be enough. But the things I want aren’t here, yet. Maybe someday. But we need this stuff now. My children’s childhoods are happening now and my wishful intentions aren’t sufficient.

We have planted things in our garden, anticipating harvest. We are looking forward. We want to stay. We want to be gone already. The disparity tears me apart. Oh, Spring. Oh, thirteen year old daughter. There are a lot of perks to having gigantic sibling age gaps (virtually no squabbling!), but when your big kid is a teenager and your youngest is a little baby, it’s like a constant droning thump in the brain, so fast, so fast, so fast, it goes by so fast.

In-between the country road driving, and the seed inventory, and the muck and management of keeping house, I listened to these songs a lot today. If I had my act together, I’d make a Spring playlist for you, and these two would probably be on it. Can’t we just sit around in the magic evening sunlight and listen to music we like? Can’t that be enough?

(so many other things i want to blog about! i know Super Ulysses is what everybody wants to read about, and i have volumes i could write about him, but it’s not all limb differences and surprising baby over here, it’s also grassy feet and sweeping floors and dinner. thanks for sticking around, though. you’re like the good neighbors i wish i had but don’t.)

photostream

iphoneography

i heart instagram

this.

"And since old Tom and the children could not know hurt or fear unless she acknowledged hurt and fear, she had practiced denying them in herself. And since, when a joyful thing happened, they looked to see whether joy was on her, it was her habit to build up laughter out of inadequate materials. But better than joy was calm. Imperturbability could be depended upon. And from her great and humble position in the family she had taken dignity and a clean calm beauty. From her position as healer, her hands had grown sure and cool and quiet; from her position as arbiter she had become as remote and faultless in judgment as a goddess. She seemed to know that if she swayed the family shook, and if she ever really deeply wavered or despaired the family would fall, the family will to function would be gone." - John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath.